It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium
By John Ed Bradley
ESPN Books, 295 pages, $24.95
John Ed Bradley lived the dream of every schoolboy football player growing up in Louisiana: He got to run out of the tunnel and take the field at Tiger Stadium as more than 80,000 insanely partisan Louisiana State University fans screamed themselves silly. The games started, the din grew louder, and Bradley was overtaken by the sense that nothing else that happened in his life would matter as much as what was about to transpire over the next few hours. College football, especially at a school like LSU, where the game is almost a religion, can steal a man’s soul.
Nearly 30 years have elapsed since Bradley played his last game for the Tigers, and he’s still on a quest to regain that soul. “It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium” is an introspective memoir of his search, and it’s a mesmerizing read, probably the year’s best within the sports genre, achingly sentimental in some parts, brutally truthful in others.
Bradley grew up in Opelousas, the son of a high school football coach he idolized, so it was almost preordained that he’d play for the Tigers, provided he was good enough, and committed enough.
No problem. Handling the unglamorous but vital position of center, Bradley was a four-year varsity letterman and second-team All-Southeast Conference as a senior behind Alabama’s Dwight Stephenson, who went on to a Hall of Fame pro career with the Miami Dolphins. On-field results were the objective for all his hard work and sacrifice, but they’re only part of a larger, recurring issue: Why did it matter like nothing else before or since?
Bradley deliberately distanced himself from LSU football after he stopped playing, distanced himself so thoroughly that some teammates thought he’d become a recluse. He became, instead, a sportswriter, first as a staffer with The Washington Post (with a shaky, deadline-blowing start), then as the author of memorable feature stories and profiles for Sports Illustrated, GQ and Esquire magazines.
Maybe the best of those stories, written for Sports Illustrated, came after Bradley learned his beloved college coach, Charlie McClendon, was in failing health. He was moved to end his self-imposed exile and visit, and the sight of the great “Coach Mac,” to whom the book is dedicated, awaiting death was the impetus for Bradley to re-examine his LSU experience and gradually reconnect with various teammates in the hope of determining what it all meant and why it so mattered. It’s a question without a real answer, and it’s fascinating.
In one of the book’s most poignant scenes, Bradley is assessing an ugly, painful chest wound that won’t heal, can’t heal, until he stops wearing the “lucky” shoulder pads that are irritating the affected area, rubbing it raw. The hideous gash and its stubborn refusal to heal seem symbolic of the physical and emotional price Bradley has paid for his single-minded commitment to LSU football. His father walks in and asks, ” ‘Was it worth it?’ “
” ‘It was the best time of my life,’ ” Bradley replies.
” ‘But was it worth it?’ ” his father repeats.
” ‘Yes, sir. It was worth it.’ “
So is reading about it, many times over. John Ed Bradley was a good football player, to be sure, but he’s a marvelous writer.
Rozelle: Czar of the NFL
By Jeff Davis
McGraw-Hill, 544 pages, $27.95
During Pete Rozelle’s 29-year reign as commissioner, the National Football League evolved from a humble, mom-and-pop-style operation into the wealthiest, most powerful, most successful sports entity in the world.
Rozelle, who prided himself on being a “football guy” even though he didn’t play the game above the sandlot level, always credited great players, coaches and executives with creating an irresistible product that became a brash and brawny symbol of American cultural tastes. But in truth, Rozelle’s uncanny sense of marketing and promotion, and his skills as a negotiator and problem solver had as much to do with building the NFL into a worldwide colossus as the entire players’ wing of the Hall of Fame.
Jeff Davis’ hefty biography is an interesting and exhaustive take on how it happened, beginning with Rozelle’s visionary sense of the power of TV. With more networks wanting in on the coverage and paying ever-higher rights fees for the privilege, the NFL’s partnership with TV has gown so lucrative that teams are in the black before they sell a ticket to a single game.
That’s Rozelle’s doing.
So was the merger with the upstart American Football League that ended a costly bidding war for talent, created the Super Bowl and established the foundation of the monster entity the NFL has become.
Less significant, though recounted at comparable length, are the “Heidi Game” and the evolution of NFL Films, both of which occurred on Rozelle’s watch and are fairly interesting sidebar stories, NFL Films perhaps worthy of its own book. But in devoting so many words to them here, Davis distracts his own narrative.
Davis has a real affinity for NFL pioneers and architects, having tackled George “Papa Bear” Halas in a previous biography. Both books dutifully record what each man did, but neither sufficiently gets to the essence of who either man was, in the manner of, say, David Maraniss’ “When Pride Still Mattered,” a remarkable character study of Vince Lombardi that sets the standard for sports biographies.
That standard isn’t quite reached here, but it’s an honest, informative effort, a worthwhile read.
Far Afield: A Sportswriting Odyssey
By S.L. Price
Lyons, 247 pages, $24.95
S.L. Price is probably the best remaining reason to read Sports Illustrated, which he demonstrated most recently in September with a haunting recapitulation of the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a coach for minor league baseball’s Tulsa Drillers, and the unthinkable impact on his young family after Coolbaugh was struck and killed by a line drive two months earlier.
Aware of Price’s value, the magazine might have acquiesced to any reasonable request rather than risk losing him when a newspaper (full disclosure: this newspaper) sought to hire him away in 2002. Price sought and received an assignment to spend a year with his own young family in Europe, in the south of France, observing events sporting and otherwise that rarely cross the threshold of American consciousness but carry supreme significance to those participating and/or watching in their corners of the world.
“Far Afield” is the result, and it’s a masterpiece.
An engaging, guileless curiosity has always informed Price’s work; he needs to feel truly confident in what he knows before he starts to write. Once he does, the words come with simple, elegant clarity, shaped by a sharp eye for detail and a smart, worldly perspective. Whether it’s a cricket match between blood enemies India and Pakistan, or war-ravaged Belgrade’s deep-rooted obsession with basketball, “Far Afield” not only takes you there, it deposits you squarely in the middle of whatever is going on.
Just as affecting are scenes from the dinner table as Price, his patient-as-a-saint wife, Fran, and their three small children try to navigate a world that’s new and unfailingly challenging to them.
“Far Afield” is a delightful read, an exemplar of what sportswriting can be if allowed to breathe once in a while.
The Bus: My Life in and out of a Helmet
By Jerome Bettis, with Gene Wojciechowski
Doubleday, 216 pages, $23.95
As a young man nurtured by a caring, tight-knit family, Jerome Bettis figured out that “nice” worked for him, even as he grew up in a hard Detroit neighborhood that viewed that trait as a weakness. He has been perceived as a nice guy from his days at Notre Dame through his rambles toward the Hall of Fame as a one of the most powerful running backs in NFL history. And in his current job, as Bettis trades quips with Bob Costas and Cris Collinsworth on the set of NBC-TV’s “Sunday Night Football,” the public perception of him is remarkably favorable.
Which is fine. By all accounts, “The Bus” is a high-character guy — socially aware, generous, good to his mother. (The nickname, by the way, was the brainchild of a Notre Dame student reporter.) There’s a lot more to his story than football, and fellow heavy hitter Gene Wojciechowski has helped Bettis turn that story into an entertaining read that’s a lot more candid than most jock memoirs.
Bettis was no choirboy as a Detroit street kid; he shoplifted and sold a little weed. But he recognized the opportunities inherent in a Notre Dame scholarship and cleaned up his act in South Bend, though he acknowledges feeling lost at times in an affluent, overwhelmingly white atmosphere. The experience sharpened his sense of who he is and helped him through some rough times with the Rams, Los Angeles and St. Louis versions, where the cast of villains included quarterback Jim Everett (“soft as puppy fur”) and coach Rich Brooks (“a back-stabber … not to be trusted”).
Pittsburgh worked out much better, though it was a constant struggle to convince coach Bill Cowher that “the Bus” wasn’t wearing down as he accumulated heavy miles. Bettis lasted 13 years in the NFL, completing his run with the Steelers’ victory over Seattle in Super Bowl XL in February 2006 — in Detroit, no less. The picture of a smiling Bettis holding the Lombardi Trophy aloft amid a confetti shower suggests a joy ride. Bettis’ book fits that description as well.
The GM: The Inside Story of a Dream Job and the Nightmares That Go With It
By Tom Callahan
Crown, 276 pages, $25.95
Anyone who has ever won a dollar or earned bar-stool bragging rights playing fantasy football has probably considered the handiwork of an NFL general manager — the Bears’ Jerry Angelo, say — and thought: “What’s the big deal? I could do that.”
No, you couldn’t. In this insider’s look at the final year of Ernie Accorsi’s distinguished career as a pro football executive, what comes through most strikingly is the uncertainty a GM faces almost daily, the sense of helplessness as the most thoughtful, careful plans and ideas blow up like a running back’s knee or a linebacker’s deportment.
Accorsi’s 35-year NFL tenure suggests more hits than misses, and Super Bowl teams in Baltimore and New York can be ascribed to his presence. But he’s best known for assembling and running the Bernie Kosar-era Cleveland Browns, who wound up being the source of his greatest heartbreak: back-to-back losses to Denver in the 1986-87 AFC Championship games, John Elway conducting “The Drive” to win the former and Earnest Byner fumbling within one measly yard of a game-tying touchdown in the latter.
Through the highs and the lows, Accorsi never lost his love for the game, for the competition, and his ongoing fascination comes through in Callahan’s sharp observations and lively writing. They’ve known each other a long time, and their mutual trust is evident in every recounted story.
Callahan scored big last year with “Johnny U,” a wonderful biography of John Unitas, an NFL icon. Accorsi, incidentally, idolized Johnny U. Unlike Accorsi’s Browns, Callahan has delivered back-to-back winners.
